After eggs are laid how soon do you have to get them in the incubator?

[FlyingMFarm]

My husband and I started a small hobby upland game bird preserve back in October 2014 at our home. We have a good amount of pheasants right now and we just got 8 eggs over-night. We don't have an incubator yet because we didn't plan on incubating ourselves, but... we think it's worth a shot in trying and also will get us to learn more.

My question is : Once the eggs are laid in the flight pens, how long do we have to get them in the incubator to possibly be successful in hatching? We have eggs we just picked up today 4-10-15 and then have another 4 or 5 from less than 1 week ago - we've kept them in our home in egg cartons, I'm guessing it's 65+ degrees in there because we keep our house at 63 degrees.....

Any help would be appreciated

Thank you !!

 

[pingu1]

iv heard they keep longer in the fridge but they should last at max 7 days

 

[dheltzel]

Never refrigerate them! 60 - 65 is a good temp to store them at. Most eggs easily last 7 days with very little reduction in hatch rate. If you turn them 3 times a day, you can go longer. Even when they start to get old, it's not a sudden thing, they number that will develop just drops off slowly. I expect you would get some to hatch even after a month, it's just not optimal.

Maybe you should advertise the eggs for sale and let someone else hatch them until you are ready to buy an incubator.

 

[WVduckchick]

Also, if you are keeping them in cartons, keep them fat end up, and you can just tilt the whole carton at one time. Prop it up with a book or something on one side, then shift the book to the other side at least 3 times a day.

 

[FlyingMFarm]

Thank you everyone we bought a basic incubator from tsc to start. Temp is at 99-99.5 but the humidity is only getting up to about 50% even w/ all the water slots completely full. Im turning them 3 times per day. I read 60% humidity is needed. How much might it effect our hatch rate? Should i get a waterbottle and also mist water on the eggs to help build more humidity?

 

[rkeele]

Currently doing my first duck incubation .
From what I have gathered the amount of humidity depends on your location and climate right now.
I ran mine at 50% for the first 18 days to realize it was to high. The air cells weren't even close to being the right size they should have been . So I had to take all water out and drop the humidity with only 5 days to try to get them bigger . . Pretty much I've learned let the egg tell you how much humidity it needs . If the air cell isn't increasing very fast you might need to lower the humidity , if it's increasing really fast you need to add humidity .

 

[WVduckchick]

50% is likely too humid unless you live in a very dry area. And those built-in hygrometers are notoriously wrong. You need to watch your air cells to let them tell you whether you need more or less humidity. And I would suggest buying another thermometer/hygrometer, and test them before relying on them. Candle the eggs after the first several days and make sure the air cells are growing well. Good luck and keep us posted!